


sirens and bandages (after this, everything changes)

by mars22



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:21:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24494962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mars22/pseuds/mars22
Summary: it seems like they always end up here -- the space just after everything ends, the calm after the storm.
Relationships: Eleven | Jane Hopper/Mike Wheeler
Kudos: 29





	sirens and bandages (after this, everything changes)

At this point, El was used to the swarm of government officials. It was all she had ever known for so long, and they reappeared that night in 1983 outside of Mike’s house, and at the hideout in Chicago. This was just another one of those times.  


She sat alone on an ambulance, a sweet nurse putting what she called “stitches” in her leg. To her, it just looked like when Joyce came over to hem her dress for the Snowball, but on her leg. It hurt like hell. Earlier, the same nurse had put a bandage on her head. She felt sore, drained, and tired. El wanted to see two people: Hopper and Mike.  


Luckily for her, as the nurse left her line of vision to go get a bandage for her leg, Mike appeared behind her. He had a blanket wrapped around his shoulder and a large cut on his cheek , a wound that had been cleaned up. He also looked tired, and injured, but he was there.  


“Hey,” he said. It was a little awkward and he sounded a bit breathless. “Can I -- um -- sit?” He gestured vaguely to the floor of the ambulance where El was situated. She nodded, sliding over towards the center of the ambulance so he could sit to her right. Immediately, without a thought, she rested her head on his shoulder.  


“Are you okay?” he said without looking at her. She nodded against him. As she folded her legs to get comfortable, he took her hands in his, gently, and rested them on his lap. She could feel him tense up, like he had something to say but he was looking for the right words (it had happened earlier that night, when Mike tried and failed to express his true feelings for her in the grocery store). “I’m sorry,” he finally settled on. “For lying.”  


“You don’t have to be,” she straightened, turning to face him. “I understand.”  


He smiled in spite of himself at that. She always did.  


“I know.” Mike sounded frustrated with himself. “It’s just -- I feel like I broke a promise to you.”  


El’s heart broke. She knew what that meant to them, and to him. If Mike was feeling like that, then guilt was eating him up inside.  


“You -- you never promised you wouldn’t lie to me,” the words were comforting, and soft. “You’ve never broken a promise to me, Mike.”  


El tried to sound reassuring, but she knew she was failing. She didn’t know what to say, what to do to make Mike understand that this wasn’t his fault, that she knew he loved her, and wouldn’t intentionally hurt her. She understood that he lied because he was scared that everything would change if he didn’t. It wasn’t intended to be a hurtful lie.  


“I know, but it was like, kind of our unspoken promise, I guess. Friends don’t lie, and we don’t break promises. It was like our two ‘rules’, and I broke one of them.”  


“Relationships don’t have rules,” El said sagely. “And so you didn’t break them.”  


Mike had no words, so he kissed her then, all soft and sweet. She moved one of her hands to run through his hair. For one, blissful moment, she closed her eyes and pretended that the sirens were music and she was in her room, kissing Mike in the early, endless days of summer vacation. But then she pulled away ever so slightly, and they were back in the soft purple light of the mall.  


“Do me a favor,” he whispered softly. “Never ‘dump my ass’ again.” She chuckled, her face still close enough that their noses were bumping together.  


“Never,” she said it with absolute certainty, shaking her head ever so slightly as she said it. “I promise.” She pressed another quick kiss to his lips and resigned back to laying her head on his shoulder. Please say it, she chanted at him silently. She hadn’t thought about what he had said at the cabin for hours now, but the fact that everything had slowed for the first time in 48 hours meant that her mind was back to reliving that moment again and again: her fingertips on the door handle, hesitating to hear what Mike had to say.  


_Because I love her and I can’t lose her again! _  
__

__Just thinking about it sent a million butterflies whirling through her stomach, just as they had when she first heard him say it. Now El was waiting eagerly for him to find the right time to say it so she could say it back. There was no doubt about it in her mind: she loved him, too.  
_ _

__But their moment was interrupted by the sudden arrival of Joyce and the weird man with the beard, whom El knew to be with Hopper. She decided to leave the moment for another, perhaps more intimate moment.  
_ _

__“I’m going to go see Hopper,” she whispered in Mike’s ear. She shrugged her blanket off and stood.  
_ _

__Looking back a few weeks later, El would realize that that had been their last moment before they realized that everything would change. Their last moment before their days were numbered, before they were living on borrowed time and counting the days until she had to leave with the Byers. After that, El would always wish she could go back to those first weeks of summer with Mike: endless and hopeful, filled with soft kisses and young love. Back when, for the first and only time, nothing stood in their way._ _

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know what to say here, other than that i wrote this right after the season, and my writing was a little shaky, and i think the formatting is weird. it's not very descriptive (as you can tell by the 927 words), but i'm still kinda proud of it. i'm working on something about lucas and max, and her time in california, so if you're interested maybe let me know in the comments? idk. hope you enjoyed! you can also find me on tumblr if that interests you at all -- under mikewhecler :)


End file.
